Climate change is a fundamental threat to sustainable development and the fight against poverty. The World Bank Group is concerned that without bold action now, the warming planet threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development.
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Climate change affects rural
women's and men's ability to secure their
livelihoods. At the same time, it poses new challenges for
the agricultural sector in reducing... Show More + poverty and food
insecurity and in transforming itself into a strong engine
for sustainable economic growth. Climate change is likely to
exacerbate inequalities between women and men if efforts to
integrate gender concerns in climate change responses are
neglected (Skinner 2011). Already, in view of the increased
climate variability, there is a pressing need to adopt
gender-sensitive approaches in order to achieve food
security and poverty reduction (FAO 2011). This Agriculture
and Environmental Services (AES) note examines the nexus
between Gender, Agriculture, and Climate Change discusses
how and why women and men are differently affected by
climate change and why addressing gender inequality is
crucial to addressing climate change impacts. It also offers
recommendations for gender-sensitive responses to climate change. Show Less -

Burkina Faso has experienced continued
degradation of its natural resources (forests, farm and
grazing lands, lakes, and rivers) on which nearly 90 percent
of the population... Show More + depends for their living. The country has
almost 21 percent of its area under dry savannah forests,
contributing 3.65 percent to the Gross Domestic Product
(GDP). Deforestation is estimated at 1 percent per annum and
an associated loss of income estimated at 1.23 percent of
GDP. Burkina Faso is one of the eight pilot countries chosen
for the Forest Investment Program (FIP). Under this program
Burkina Faso could draw around $30 million for the
preservation and increase of carbon stocks with poverty
reduction, through reductions in deforestation and
degradation and overall better sustainable forest
management. The proximate causes of deforestation include
agricultural expansion, pastoralism on fallow ground during
the dry season, wood removals from forests mainly for
domestic uses and the overexploitation of non-timber forest
products. This report is organized as follows: Sections two
to three provide information on the participants,
organization, structure and findings from the national
workshop on forest governance. Section four reports on the
findings from the background report and the broader
stakeholder consultations (up to the time of the workshop).
Section five highlights the key governance weaknesses (based
on synthesizing the information in sections three and four),
faced by the country, their possible redress and their
potential for inclusion in FIP funded projects. Section six
concludes with some suggestions on next steps. Show Less -

This study on Bangladesh was undertaken
to analyze the gender dimensions of climate change and the
role of institutions in reducing gender gaps. The study was
carried... Show More + out in 20 sites covering 600 households, from March
2010 to May 2011, using both qualitative and quantitative
instruments. This note is organized into five sections. The
next section gives an overview of climate change and the
gender and institutional context in Bangladesh. The third
section presents the key study findings and is divided into
three subsections: site- and household-specific
vulnerabilities; analysis of gender dimensions of climate
change using the household data and four propositions; and
description of institutional challenges and gaps in
supporting the resilience of women and men. Section four
provides examples of adaptation programs in Bangladesh, and
section five provides recommendations for enhancing
gender-responsive adaptive capacity in Bangladesh. Show Less -

The purpose of this report is to inform
practitioners on gender dynamics in Bolivia as they relate
to natural resource management and climate change. This is
done to... Show More + provide new knowledge for mainstreaming gender into
rural development projects. The aim is to go beyond general
gender assumptions and provide more detailed empirical
knowledge on differentiated gender roles and the relative
access of women and men to resources. The report will
demonstrate that women and men in rural Bolivia have many
different roles and opportunities, which are not equally
distributed. The paper will also show that these roles are
changing as a result of both general development trends and
climate change. Further, evidence demonstrates that women
and men experience vulnerability and adapt to climate change
differently. As a result, rural development and adaptation
strategies should integrate the relative capacities of women
and men and respond to their particular needs. This will
help avoid counterproductive out comes that widen gender
gaps and allow for more sustainable, pro-poor rural
development. This report will begin by introducing the
methodology and case study regions. It will then examine in
detail the specific roles of women and men in rural Bolivia.
Next it will look at the gendered access to and control over
resources and how gender roles, access and control are
changing as a result of climate change. The report will
finish with some general conclusions and specific
recommendations for development practitioners in rural Bolivia. Show Less -

Gender equality in disaster management
and climate adaptation highlights the different ways in
which disasters affect men and women. Gender specific needs
and opportunities... Show More + are to be found along the entire disaster
cycle which needs to be understood in disaster risk
management. Since the tsunami in Aceh there has been
significant learning about good practices for gender
responsive disaster management. This can be strengthened
through gender mainstreaming in all related national and
local-level policies, institutions and programs to tackle
the root causes of gender-based vulnerabilities, ensure use
of gender analysis and sex disaggregated data to help target
resources and give equal weight to the rights as well as
capacities of both men and women. Show Less -

This report provides responses by Trung
Son Hydropower Project Management Board (TSHPMB) to comments
obtained from consultations at village, commune, district
and provincial... Show More + levels and with NGOs for a period from
January to March 2010. This is a series of consultations
with affected communities, local authorities and social
organizations about safeguard of the Trung Son hydropower
project. Thus, consultations and responses to consultation
comments will focus on safety issues of the project. These
documents aimed at addressing issues relating to safeguard
of the project and are not project overall reports so they
might not provide sufficiently information of the project.
Detailed information or other relevant information shall be
provided at request if the provision does not violate
regulations of the Government of Vietnam and/or the World
Bank on information disclosure. The project has received
several comments from affected communities, local
authorities as well as from social organizations during the
consultations. Due to coincidence or similarity in comments
as well as to make responses succinct and easy to track,
those are coincident or similar shall be put together. Show Less -

The World Bank is making strides in
mainstreaming gender-sensitive approaches to climate action
on the ground. Ensuring that men and women have equal access
to education,... Show More + economic opportunities, productive inputs and
equal chances to become socially and politically active can
generate broad productivity gains, and lead to more
inclusive and greener development path for all. For the
World Bank, gender analysis is an integral aspect of the
upstream social analysis that is required to inform both
development policy lending (DPL) and investment lending
(IL). It helps identify and suggest ways to mitigate
possible risks in terms of exacerbating gender inequality,
and highlight opportunities to enhance positive outcomes for
gender equality. The entry points for such upstream gender
analysis include Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA)
in the case of DPL, climate financing mechanisms are
beginning to adopt gender-sensitive approaches in program
design and results frameworks, but more needs to be done.
Much can be done to improve the effectiveness of climate
finance and actions on the ground by ensuring that gender
relations are taken into account in design, implementation,
and measurement of results. But this can only be achieved
through a concerted effort to apply a gender lens in climate
finance mechanisms. It matters for development, and it
matters for effective action on climate change. Show Less -

The environment has been high on the
agenda ever since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. With the
focus now on climate change and the successor to the Kyoto
Protocol, there... Show More + is heightened attention to the costs of
climate change mitigation and adaptation for developing
countries. And yet there has been little analysis of current
aid for the environment and the architecture to deliver it.
This report addresses that gap. It shows that nearly US$100
billion of environment aid has been committed over the past
decade, around a third of it for water supply and
sanitation. The environment's share of global aid has
averaged 15 percent between 1998 and 2007. The fastest
growing sub-sectors have been renewable energy and water
resources management, reflecting attention to climate
change. The World Bank dramatically increased its financing
for climate change in fiscal year 2008, with US$700 million
committed by International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (IBRD) and US$50 million by International
Development Association (IDA). The proliferation of actors
and programs has increased twice as fast as that for total
aid. It has matched proliferation in the health sector, with
an average 49 percent increase in the number of donors
working on the environment in each country. Some 38
countries have 15 or more donors providing environment aid.
IDA now has environment programs in 67 countries, compared
to 30 ten years ago. As funding is scaled up after
Copenhagen, there is a need to make the fullest use of
existing institutions and avoid creating new ones in order
not to overburden countries with yet more institutions and
initiatives. Failure to do so will undermine the
effectiveness of the aid being provided, and limit the
development and environmental results achieved. Show Less -

This sourcebook is a joint project of
the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
of the United Nations, and the International Fund for
Agricultural... Show More + Development (IFAD). The purpose of the
sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and
technical staff in addressing gender issues and integrating
gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation
of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with
gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather
reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking
through how to integrate gender dimensions into their
operations. The sourcebook aims to deliver practical advice,
guidelines, principles, and descriptions and illustrations
of approaches that have worked so far to achieve the goal of
effective gender mainstreaming in the agricultural
operations of development agencies. Three out of every four
poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and
most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture
for their livelihoods. In many parts of the world, women are
the main farmers or producers, but their roles remain
largely unrecognized. The 2008 "World Development
Report : Agriculture for Development" highlights the
vital role of agriculture in sustainable development and its
importance in achieving the millennium development goal of
halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme
poverty and hunger. Climate change and rising food prices
are reminders of the need to focus on food security and
agriculture for development; and the material presented in
this sourcebook suggests that accounting for the different
roles of women and men and gender equality in access to
resources and opportunities is a necessary condition for
doing so. This sourcebook is a particularly timely resource.
It combines descriptive accounts of national and
international experience in investing in agriculture with
practical operational guidance on to how to design
agriculture for development strategies that capitalize
effectively on the unique properties of agricultural growth
and rural development involving women and men as a
high-impact source of poverty reduction. It looks at gender
equality and women's empowerment, and the associated
principles have the potential to make a difference in the
lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor. Show Less -

The global environment facility (GEF)
has a long history of investing in local actions to achieve
global environmental objectives. Today, we have an even
deeper understanding... Show More + of the relationships among household
welfare, women's equality and environmental
sustainability. Mainstreaming gender in the six focal areas
of the GEF - biodiversity, climate change, international
waters, land degradation, persistent organic pollutants, and
ozone depletion - presents opportunities for further
enhancing project value as well as advancing gender
equality. This new publication reflects the GEF's
renewed commitment to highlight the link between gender
equality and environmental sustainability. It provides an
account and a first analysis of the scope, content and depth
of gender mainstreaming in GEF projects. Show Less -